


A Bleak Understanding in Reverse

by lustmordred



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Death, M/M, Prolonged Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-03
Updated: 2011-10-03
Packaged: 2017-10-24 07:04:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lustmordred/pseuds/lustmordred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was hard to imagine that life without monsters could still kill them...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bleak Understanding in Reverse

The body apologizes to the soul for its errors, and the soul  
asks forgiveness for squatting in the body without invitation.

  
_Gregory Maguire (Wicked)_   


 

It started with birdsong. Sam was taking a shower and he heard it in the running water. He stood there listening to it until the water had run cold and Dean started banging on the bathroom door. It was pretty music, it reminded him of some oriental story he'd read as a kid about a king and a nightingale. Except the nightingales were in the spray, piercing his skin with their beaks, sliding like hot needles down his back. Once he heard them it was like that gave them power and he could feel them. Their feathers slipping down his spine like fans caressing his bones. The beat of their wings upset the beat of his heart and confused his blood. Every cell in his body was an immaculate crystal.

Dean broke in the door and swept the room in his line of sight with his gun, expecting demons, ghouls, monsters, angels, _something_. He didn't expect to find Sam, crouched in the bathtub with the water spraying cold as ice down his back, whispering to himself and stroking his left forearm like it was a kitten. He blinked, then realized he was pointing his weapon at Sam's head and lowered it.

"Sam?" Dean said, going over to stand by the tub. He turned off the shower and shook him a little. "Sam, what happened? _Sammy_."

"Dean, don't yell," Sam said serenely. He tilted his head to look up at him and his lips quirked in a little smile. "I've never liked birds much, but... these... they sing and it's so pretty."

Dean scowled. " _What_?"

Sam dropped his eyes back to his arm and ran his fingers down it, fingertips skating over the tiny wet golden hairs from his elbow to the tips of his fingers. "Dean... I think I need to see a doctor."

Dean frowned and, realizing he still held his gun, reached back to slip it under his waistband against his back before he put his hand to Sam's forehead. "You don't have a fever," he said. "You feel sick?"

Sam shook his head. "Not yet," he said. "There will be headaches, though. About a week, depending... Then I'll be watching the birds fly around your head while they sing and before you know it, every day will be one big, painful tropical vacation."

"Sammy, what the fuck are you babbling about?"

"Dean," Sam said patiently. He turned his eyes back to Dean's face and they were only slightly out of focus. "Dean, I need to go to the hospital. Now."

"Alright, man," Dean said. He bent down to grab a towel off the floor and tossed it down on him. "Get dressed, then."

~~*~~

Sammy had brain tumors. The doctor called them something else, but what it basically came down to was Sammy with tumors. Cancerous tumors that couldn't be removed that were going to kill him. They didn't know exactly when. Three months or if he was really stubborn about it, maybe six, or eight.

More than a day, but less than a year.

If they wanted Sam to stop being Sam, or possibly a vegetable stuck to a ventilator, then there were doctors that could operate. The largest tumor could be removed, but not easily, and it wouldn't matter because all of the other little dust mote sized ones were growing. They were like warts on a toad all over Sammy's brain. There was something about frontal lobes and seizures and a million other things to think about now because it wouldn't be long before Sam couldn't function on his own. He might lose memories. Even without the surgeries, there was cancer eating his brain that was going to change his personality and alter his behavior.

Hearing and seeing things was just the beginning and Sam was taking it all so much better than Dean. Dean only understood a fraction of what he was being told and he felt like someone had just ripped his world away.

"You're going to die," Dean whispered, staring down at the linoleum floor at his feet. He saw the reflection of florescent lights in the white tile behind his head and focused on that. "Fuck."

"Everyone dies," Sam said calmly.

Dean shook his head and let out a deep breath. "Not like this."

"Actually, this way is pretty normal," Sam said.

"Not for us," Dean said.

"The angels and demons are gone, Dean," Sam said. "I haven't seen a ghost in nearly a year. Maybe this _is_ how it ends for us."

Leaning against the wall, Dean bent forward, feeling nauseous. "Shut up with that Sylvia Plath shit, Sammy, before I hit you."

Sam frowned.

"What?" Dean said.

"I don't know any Sylvia Plath," Sam said.

"So?"

"So, now would be the perfect time to quote some."

"Not my point," Dean said.

"Well I'm not going to stick my head in an oven if that was your point," Sam said.

"What?" Dean said. He shook his head and stood away from the wall. "Forget it. Can we leave?"

"They can't do anything, so I guess so," Sam said. He got up from the chair where he'd been sitting and ran a hand through his hair. "We're going to have to talk about this, you know."

Dean's jaw clenched. "Yeah, I know," he said, and turned to leave.

Sam sighed and followed him. "Dean."

"We can't do this here," Dean said, not slowing down. He walked through the exit doors and Sam half ran to catch up to him. "We'll talk when we're in the car or back at the apartment. Not here. _I_ can't do this here."

"Do you really think it's going to matter?" Sam said, going after him down the wheelchair ramp and into the parking lot. "It's not. I... I know you, man and this is going to fucking kill you no matter where you're standing when—"

They reached the car and Dean took out his keys, then stopped, turned, and grabbed Sam. He shoved Sam back against the driver's side door and kissed him. His hands fisted in Sam's coat and he pulled Sam against him as he pressed him back against the warm Impala. It was a kiss full of desperation, full of not wanting to know what he knew, wanting to keep what he had. Sam kissed him back with less force, allowing Dean to take that from him because that was what he needed now.

So this was grief. It seemed only right that it should touch Dean, who was living more than Sam, who was dying.

Dean broke the kiss and nuzzled the side of Sam's face, panting softly. "It's killing me right now," he whispered against his skin, tugging lightly at Sam's coat like he wanted to climb inside it with him. "I'm scared," he confessed. "I can face ghosts, zombies, demons, fucking angels, whatever. Bring it on. Rain down that goddamn brimstone and smite me with your flaming fucking sword. I can take that, all of it. But you're right Sammy… this is killing me."

"Dean," Sam said, lifting a hand to pet it down the back of his head. "The sun's in my eyes. I'm listening to Chopin right now and smelling double fudge cookies and every time I move my hand I see tracers like worms following my fingers. I'm sorry I'm killing you, but I think we should go."

Dean made a strangled sound and pushed away from him, eyes on the ground, fingers wrapped tight and bloodless around his keys. "Maybe you should drive," he said.

Sam blinked in surprise, but he shook his head. "I don't think that's a good idea," he said.

Dean ran his tongue over his bottom lip and nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, alright."

Sam watched him anxiously as he went around the hood of the car and Dean got in and started it. "You going to be okay? To drive, I mean."

"Fine, Sammy," Dean said. He hit play on the tape player and scowled as Bonnie Raitt's voice filled the car in the middle of "I Can't Make You Love Me", which was so not cool music to be listening to right now. He hit eject and threw the cassette in the back seat.

"Um... Try the radio," Sam suggested.

"Shut up, Sammy," Dean said, backing the car away from the curb. "Just... I need to think. Please."

"Sure," Sam said. He rolled down his window and sat back, tilting his head back.

"You still hear birds?" Dean asked, voice low like he wasn't sure he wanted Sam to hear the question.

"Yes," Sam said, breathing in the cool air as it hit his face. "They never stopped."

~~*~~

After that day, once they knew, everything changed.

Sam stayed at home most of the time while Dean went to work. They’d had an office on the third floor of a building on a street named after some flower that neither of them could ever remember. Now it was Dean's alone and he waited there impatiently for six hours every day for some woman who was convinced her husband was cheating on her to knock on his door. He tracked down runaway kids, stolen DVD players and bail-jumpers. He got paid honest cash by the hour, plus expenses, to deal with living, breathing human beings, something he had very little talent for. But he did the work and he did it well, so it paid their rent and kept Sam stocked up on pain killers which he took when the headaches were bad, which was most of the time.

Sam took a lot of pills, drank a lot of booze and sometimes he walked to the mailbox and back naked. He tried to read sometimes, at least for a while, but then the headaches that woke him up in the middle of the night stopped going away and he couldn't concentrate. His mind would wander and an hour later he would blink and realize that he had yet to turn the page. He tried exercise, but even without the headaches, he was getting too weak to do much of anything and nothing at all like he knew he should be able to, so he quit. He started to forget things, just small things, but still... Dean bought him a little pocket notebook and Sam started writing himself notes.

Dean said "I love you" to him nearly every day now and sometimes Sam wondered if it was because Dean thought he might forget it. Or maybe it was because it was something Dean didn't want to regret later; the things he hadn't said. Sometimes Sam wondered if Dean was losing his mind. He thought, if the appropriate response to reality is to sometimes go insane and if your reality was _their_ reality, then insanity might be the _only_ response. So probably it was not all that unexpected, if one knew what to expect.

Sam had a lot of time alone to think about these things now.

One morning Sam woke up sitting in a chair in the living room because someone was knocking on the door. It wasn't the sitting in the chair part that woke him—he slept there most of the time because laying down made the headaches worse—it was the knocking. They had been living in the apartment for over a year and the only time anyone knocked was when they had the wrong address.

Sam winced, his eyes feeling like they were pulsing right out of his skull and got up to answer it so the knocking would stop.

He peered at the man on the threshold and frowned. He was in a suit. He had a very ancient looking woman and a girl of about ten with him. "Hello?"

"Hello," the man said, smiling brightly.

Sam looked beyond him at the old woman and little girl and his frown deepened. He knew he was in his underwear, but they were standing in _his_ doorway, so they could just deal. "Yeah, can I do something for you?" he asked the man.

"My name is David Taylor," the man said. "This is my mother, Thelma, and my daughter, Becky."

"Pleased to meet you," Sam said, sounding anything but. He scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed. The guy had pamphlets and a bible. Unless this was an intervention of some kind, there was only one thing that could mean. "Look, I'm sorry, but I'm really not interested," he said.

"Can I just leave you one of these then?" Taylor asked, holding out one of his pamphlets. "Just read it, please. It—"

"It would make excellent fire starter if we had a wood stove," Sam said, taking it from him. "Or a book marker, if I didn't have to listen to all my books on tape now. Or great toilet paper if I wasn't worried about chaffing."

Taylor's face turned red. Sam wondered if it was from anger or embarrassment. Maybe a little of both. "I see," Taylor said. He turned and murmured something to his mother, who glared at Sam over her son's shoulder then led the little girl away.

Taylor turned back and he looked angry now, not embarrassed. Apparently it was a momma's boy thing. "I'm sorry you feel that way, Mr...."

"Winchester," Sam snapped. He was pretty sure that hadn't been the name Dean put on the lease, but fuck it. His head hurt, he was shaking, he was naked before an irate Jehovah's witness and he was trying really damn hard not to watch the bugs crawling through his hair. Bright colored bugs like bejeweled Egyptian scarabs. "Look, dude, I don't have anything against you or what you believe as long as you believe it somewhere else, okay? I'm tired, I'm dying and I've had about all I can take of angels for one lifetime."

"So you don't believe in God, Mr. Winchester?" Taylor asked.

Like he really wanted to know what Sam believed. Sam shook his head. "It's not that simple," he said.

"Oh really?" Taylor said. "Why not?"

"You don't really want to hear what I believe, Mr. Taylor," Sam said. He chased a scarab down Taylor's neck with his eyes before snapping his gaze away. "But I'll tell you because then you'll leave. I believe that life, like shit, just happens most of the time. I don't think there's a grand plan because I'm fairly sure God got his omnipotent ass run out of Heaven a long time ago and the angels he left behind are all a bunch of bored guys tired of playing the same game and watching _us_ have all the fun. I don't think there's a scrap of true grace left among them to fight over. I believe that people tend to forget that all demons were angels once. Think of that and consider what it means. Heaven's just like Hell, only with a better interior decorator. They've got track-lighting, air conditioning, maybe Saint Peter on the harp playing "Enter Sandman" and it doesn't matter what it looks like anyway because those places—Heaven and Hell—aren't where we're going. They aren't for us. Not anymore. We're human, we just die and we don't get a refund later if we close our eyes during the show."

Sam narrowed his eyes and reached out to swat at a beetle on Taylor's shoulder. Taylor jerked away from him, reminding him what he was doing and Sam took his hand back. "Now, I've told you what I think and a little bit of what I know. I don't care what you believe because I would almost bet I've heard it before," Sam said. "So, have a nice day. Get the fuck off my doorstep."

He slammed the door in the stunned man's face, locked it and leaned his forehead against the cold wood.

"Damn, Sammy," Dean murmured behind him.

Sam tensed. "You heard all that, huh?"

"Yeah, I heard it," Dean said moving to stand by his shoulder.

"And?"

"And I kinda agree with you, but I still think maybe you should sit down and let me get you something for your head," Dean said.

Sam smiled and looked at him over his shoulder. He turned and leaned his back against the closed door and laughed until he had to make himself stop before his head shattered with the pain. "Fuck God," he whispered, massaging his temple. "Seriously, fucking chicken shit asshole. Jesus, I need a drink."

Dean stepped into him and ran his hands up Sam's chest to slide his arms around his neck. "Shh, don't do that," he whispered, lowering his mouth to brush his lips over Sam's mouth. "You are the question," he said softly, moving his mouth to Sam's ear. "What am I?"

Sam made a soft sound; want, fear, pain and just plain exhaustion all in the tiny sound. "The answer," Sam whispered back, turning his head to catch Dean's mouth with a growl and kiss him. "Lock and key. God, I love you. Let me go."

Dean growled back and kissed him almost painfully hard. He imagined himself as one Sam's nightingales for just a moment. Wrapped up in the heat of his living body, so close to his soul that he could warm himself in its glow. "I can't," Dean said. "Not yet. Maybe not ever." He released him though and moved toward the kitchen. "Sit down. I'll get you a beer and your pills."

Sam sat back down and when Dean brought him his beer and his pills, he caught his hand. He ran his eyes up Dean's arm until his gaze settled on Dean's. There was such pain there, anger, frustration, but under it all like primer on a canvas Sam could see a morbid kind of determination in his brother. "You will not follow me," Sam whispered. "Tell me you won't. Promise me."

Dean's expression turned distant and he shook his head. "No," he said. "Don't ask me for that. I can't promise you that when I don't know."

"You know," Sam said. "I can see the decision... like lightning bugs just... there. You know."

"Drink your drink, Sammy," Dean said, taking his hand carefully away from Sam. "I have to go to work."

He made himself walk away from Sam, though he could feel Sam's eyes locked on him until he closed the door on them.

Once he was alone, Dean sank down onto the side of the bed and just sat there, staring at the opposite wall. He couldn't do this. Once again he was convinced that he could _not_ do this and it repeated in his head over and over, _I can't. I can't. Oh God, I can't,_ until he was dressed and pulling his coat on and walking past Sam out the door. He told himself he couldn't do it until he was doing it and it was just too late to take it back because by then he'd made it through another day.

~~*~~

Sam sat in the dark listening to Dean's steady breathing coming from the sofa where he'd collapsed when he got home. He wasn't sleeping. Sam wasn't sure exactly what he was doing except it made him think of Dean, when they were children and their father was gone, sitting up all night to keep him safe. Did he think that he could stop it? That if Death came for Sam in the night like the doctors had warned them it might, he could stand between them?

Maybe he did. That sounded just like something Dean Winchester might think.

"Dean, there's a comfortable bed in there going to waste," Sam murmured. He heard Dean's breath catch and smiled faintly in the dark. "Go lay down, will you?"

"I am laying down," Dean said.

"You know what I mean," Sam said.

There was silence for a long while, then the sound of Dean's clothes shifting against the upholstery of the couch as he sat up. "I'm scared, too, Sammy," Dean said. He reached over on the coffee table for his cigarettes and there was a spark that illuminated his fine features in the dark for just a moment while he lit one.

Sam watched the afterimage left behind shiver and grow wings, which it extended to fan itself.

"I'm scared shitless to come out here one morning—maybe tomorrow morning—and find you gone," Dean said. He sounded as weary as wet newspaper. "Find... rigor mortis and postmortem and exsanguination—"

"It's cancer, Dean, I'm probably not going to bleed to death," Sam said dryly. Dean had been watching _CSI_ at the office again from the sound of things. "I'm sorry you're scared," he said, not sure what else to say.

"Don't," Dean said. He took a long drag from his cigarette, the spark on the end growing as he inhaled. "Don't do that. Don't you be sorry."

Sam huffed out a soft, humorless laugh.

"Why did we do any of it if this..." Dean trailed off. He reached over on the table and flicked ash from his cigarette. "What was the point?"

"Of what?" Sam asked.

"Of saving people and hunting things," Dean said. "If this is what happens, what's the fucking point of it anyway? Maybe one of those innocent people we saved got hit by a bus the next day. Or got leukemia. Or a deadly case of freakish herpes, whatever. Maybe saving them one day didn't mean shit. But then we did it, didn't we, and _this_ is the thanks..." Dean stopped and crushed out his cigarette with an angry gesture that made the ashtray scrape on the wood table. "Why did we bother?"

"I don't know," Sam said. He thought for a moment. That didn't really seem like enough and the moment probably called for something more profound than that. "I like to think the moon is there even if I'm not looking at it," he said finally.

Dean stared across the dark room toward the sound of his voice. He snorted and shook his head. "Yeah, I guess," he said.

"Einstein," Sam said.

"What?" Dean said.

"Einstein said that," Sam said.

"Okay," Dean said.

"I don't think the world feels obligated to thank us," Sam said. "I don't think... I don't think it works like that. We're not entitled to a happy ending, we just get what everyone else gets."

"And what's that?" Dean asked.

"A life," Sam said simply.

"Some life," Dean said with a scoff.

Sam smiled and let his head fall back to rest against the back of his chair. "It was, yeah."

Dean put his feet up on the sofa and reclined back on it again with a sigh.

He'd thought, naively, that if there were no demons and the angels weren't watching anymore, they'd get the chance to grow old, become smelly and senile. They'd stop staking vampires and fighting off curses and start collecting social security and mowing the lawn on Saturdays. They'd come home early and sleep in late and the most stressful thing about their days would be when to fit grocery shopping into their work schedule. Library cards, parking tickets, allspice, TiVo, mailboxes, scraping the charred black stuff off burnt toast in the morning. They'd chase strange dogs away from the herb garden Sam kept on the right side of the walk, they'd get arthritis in all of their old wounded places and eventually they wouldn't even keep a gun in the house for security. For the first time in their lives they'd be boring. That's what he'd hoped for.

He could never have predicted that life without monsters would still kill them.

"If I die from this," Dean whispered, "don't expect me to be surprised."

Drifting between sleeping and awake, Sam heard him and laughed. It wasn't really funny, though. It really, _really_ wasn't.

~~*~~

A few days later, Sam had his first seizure. He came to on the floor by the chair where he slept and he didn't know where he was at. Then he thought about it and couldn't remember who he was for a few minutes and it scared him so badly that he woke up Dean with this keening, distressed sound like a baby or a rabbit might make.

Dean got on the floor with him and tried to comfort him, but Sam couldn't remember who he was and shrank away from his touch. "I..." He swallowed and looked suddenly terrified. "I..." he tried again, drawing the word out like it was something painfully difficult.

"Shh, stop it," Dean said, trying to calm him. He got up on his knees and crawled over to the end table by the chair to turn on a lamp. "Sam," he said, sitting back down next to him. "What happened?"

Sam shook his head and stared at him.

"Sammy..."

Sam shook his head again, looking worried and confused.

"Okay," Dean said. He wasn't totally sure what he was agreeing with, but he stopped trying to ask Sam questions and stopped saying his name because it seemed to bother him.

Dean put out his hand and touched Sam's arm tentatively. When Sam didn't cringe away from him, Dean stood up and pulled to get him to stand with him.

"Are you okay now?" Dean asked him.

Sam frowned and nodded.

"You want to sit with me?" Dean said. He tilted his head toward the couch. “Over there?"

Sam nodded again, then licked his lips and said, "Yeah." The word seemed to relieve him a little and he focused his attention on Dean, concentrating. "Dean."

"Yeah?" Dean said.

Sam swallowed and looked away. "Man, that was weird," he said, voice soft and frightened. "Everything was just... _gone_. I couldn't remember anything. I couldn't remember how to _talk_." He let out a soft, shaky breath and dragged both hands through his hair. "Fuck. Oh, Jesus. It's getting worse. I can... _feel it_."

Dean winced as though the knowledge caused him physical pain. "Does your head hurt?"

"You know it does," Sam said. "But this... God. This..."

"Do you want pills?" Dean asked.

Sam looked at him like he could read Dean's mind and knew that what he really wanted was to get away for a second and catch his breath. "Sure, Dean," he said and his lips twitched a little as he watched Dean practically flee the room at a near run.

That night, they slept together on the couch. It was a job fitting them both, large as they were, together on it, but they managed it with Dean laying half on top of Sam. Sam woke from nightmares twice and the last time he couldn't go back to sleep, so he lay there feeling Dean breathe against his chest, his heart like a moth beating itself against the cage of his ribs.

Their one great fear was that it would happen again. That next time, it wouldn't pass. Next time, Sam would be gone, like a scratched record that wouldn't play anymore... like a disk wiped clean of vital information. Reset back to zero.

~~*~~

Sam started out not wanting to die, but not being surprised that he was going to anyway. In the beginning, it was more about making it easy for Dean than for himself because he was leaving Dean behind and he wasn't sure how well Dean could handle that. Sam himself hadn't handled it well when their positions had been reversed and he had been the one left behind, so he doubted Dean was going to be anything less than psychotically fucked up when this was over.

But all of that was before it started to hurt so badly. Then the real pain came and it was worse than headaches. This was pain that made any words used to describe it seem like small, meaningless sounds formed on the tongues of idiots. It seemed to Sam that the nature of his disease was to ready him for dying like a cruel man trained to interrogation through torture. Suffering made death almost desirable and certainly preferable.

The calm, resigned face he showed Dean wasn't completely false. He even believed most of what he said, but that didn't make the pain hurt less or mean Sam wasn't pissed as all hell about it and the more he hurt the less he remembered to be one of those brave suffering cancer types for Dean.

Part of him wished, in a vague way, that he'd died another way. According to Dean, how they were " _supposed_ " to. Quick and painless and completely unnatural. Sam wouldn't have to watch the grief then, the grief that was reserved for the living which was supposed to happen _after_ the funeral, not before it. But then Sam didn't have a lot of experience with grief, or funerals come to that. He couldn't even remember the name of a single person in their family that had died of natural causes and everyone who had ever mattered had just died, leaving no time or room to mourn for long.

Now he was falling to pieces without falling apart. He was bitter and spiteful then out of nowhere he would laugh hysterically. He dropped things and bumped into door frames, forgot where he was or how to use a microwave. If he went farther than a block away from their apartment, he had to call Dean to come get him but sometimes he couldn't remember the right phone number.

Sam wanted to die slowly by growing old. He wanted the distinguished wrinkles of crow’s feet, slate grey hair and maybe reading glasses. Eventually he wanted to trade in Budweiser and Jack Daniel’s for Oolong with lemon and artificial sweetener. He wanted arthritis, goddamn it and he wanted to watch the sun rise and set on the same horizon for the next twenty years from a fucking rocking chair.

Dying is easy, it's living that's hard someone had once told him. He couldn't remember now who it had been, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that whoever the hell said it had only been mostly right. _Death_ was easy, dying... dying was the hardest thing Sam had ever done, and he wasn't even finished yet.

Alone one day while Dean was out trying to find some old lady's stolen fortune or something, Sam wandered into the bathroom to take a shower. Dean had installed handles on the wall of the shower like they used in hospitals and nursing homes for the crippled and Sam _hated_ them. Mostly because of how necessary they were.

He used them to brace himself as the birds in the water tried to sing him to sleep as he washed his hair. Sam was toweling himself off when he looked up, caught a face staring back at him from the mirror and didn't recognize himself.

He didn't remember anything at all for quite a while after that.

~~*~~

Dean spent most of the day tracking down some rare old moth-eaten book that had been stolen from a bookstore the week before. He found it, but the book was currently on a plane headed to Europe and though the client had offered to pay his expenses so he'd go after it, Dean had politely declined. He hated flying and there was no way in hell he was leaving Sam alone or putting him through that kind of travel with him being as sick as he was.

He gave the client a list of other P.I.s who had less problem straying from home then went back to his office to find that the family of mice living in the wall by the bathroom had taken a shit in his coffee cup. The _entire family_. Mommy Mouse, Daddy Mouse and all seventy _thousand_ horny, incestuous little baby mice.

Disgusted, Dean just threw the cup, turds and all, into the waste can. He called the exterminator and left a rather desperate sounding message, then decided to go home an hour early. Fuck it, he'd had a rough day—ending in the loss of his favorite coffee cup—so he was entitled.

There was a parking ticket on his windshield, stuck between the wiper and the glass, slowly disintegrating in the rain. Cursing under his breath, Dean wadded it up and tossed it in the gutter then got in the car and drove home. On his way, all he could think of was getting there, walking through the door, finding Sam looking back at him, tired and maybe a little confused, but still alive.

 _Please_ , he thought and it was the closest thing to praying he had anymore, but he did it every day so he figured it had to count for something. Of course, if Sam was right—and he probably was—there was a jealous little cherub sitting up in Heaven with a chalkboard keeping a tally and picking his nose.

Funny how the last few months had drained Dean's sense of humor clean out of him. He went around the apartment finding notes on rainbow colored Post-Its with things like _Your name is Sam. You live with your brother, Dean._ scrawled on them. There was a blue Post-It from three weeks ago with _You don't like eggs._ written on it stuck under a magnet in the shape of a star on the refrigerator because Sam had woke up one night and decided to make Eggs Benedict then thrown up in the kitchen sink when he tried to eat it. Shit like that just made everything seem absolutely un-funny. In fact, it sometimes made Dean feel like crying like a pussified baby.

When Dean got home, he knew something was wrong. It wasn't the blood on the floor that clued him in first, though, it was the pieces of broken mirror glass strewn across the wood floor reflecting the bright white of the plaster ceiling. Then he saw the blood and just like that he could taste the bitter pounding of his heart against the back of his tongue.

" _Sam!_ ," Dean called into the apartment, trying for the moment not to scream it because, like Sam had said, he wasn't sick with something he was going to bleed to death from. Maybe he'd just cut himself shaving.

With glass from the busted mirror...?

Okay, scratch that. Something was _wrong_. " _SAM!_ " he shouted, and slammed the front door as he ran into the apartment to find him. " _SAMMY! Where are you?! Answer me!_ "

" _Dude_ ," Sam said from the floor as Dean came around a corner into the hallway where he was and almost stepped on him. He grabbed Dean as he lost his balance when he drew up short and steadied him with a hand on his hip. "I'm right here. Chill out and stop screaming, you’re hurting my brain."

Dean scratched his forehead and stared down at him. He was sitting on the floor in the hallway that led to the apartment's two bedrooms with his back to the wall looking down at his hands, which were resting on his thighs. His hands were scratched and split across the knuckles and Dean quickly concluded that was where the blood in the entryway had come from. Aside from his bloody hands, which looked like they were already scabbing over, Sam appeared to be unharmed.

Dean sighed, the relief making him a bit weak. "What the hell happened?" he asked, sliding down the wall to sit with Sam. "Why are you on the floor?"

Sam looked around them, then back down at his hands. He flexed them in front of his face, watching the scabs on his knuckles break open and begin bleeding again. "I... hit the mirror in the bathroom," he said.

"Figured," Dean said. "Don't worry about it, I'll clean it up later. You gonna tell me _why_?"

"I got out of the shower and... I looked in the mirror and I didn't recognize myself. I've looked into mirrors thousands of times, so I _should_ know. I should look into my eyes and see _my_ eyes, but... not this time." Sam licked his lips and shuddered. "The longer I looked at myself, trying to make the face there make sense to me, the less sense it made. I would swear... I don't know what to, but I would fucking swear I've _never_ seen that face before in my life."

Dean lifted a hand to rub the bridge of his nose. He sighed and let his head fall back against the wall with a light _thud_. "So you punched it," he said.

Some things about the shit that was going on with Sam he just could _not_ understand. It was really difficult to relate to looking into the bathroom mirror and seeing a stranger instead of yourself—at least in the way Sam meant it—but Dean could totally relate to lashing out at the mirror to destroy the image. Funny how it often worked like that with him.

"Why are you sitting in the hallway on the floor, though?" Dean asked.

Sam shrugged. He turned his head to look at Dean and he seemed a little bit ashamed. "I was coming back this way to the living room and I... I got tired."

"Oh," Dean said. Suddenly he felt like he was going to cry. Sam had hit the mirror with enough force to shatter it, then had been unable to make it the twenty or thirty feet down the hallway to his chair in the living room because he'd tired himself out. It was a little thing and as the cancer got worse, it was to be expected, but it was really one of the saddest things he'd ever heard in his life.

But then, he thought, at least Sam wasn't sitting on the floor because he'd fallen there. Sam, who had always been so steady and self-possessed, who had always been kind of graceful... Well, Sam fell down a lot. So at least it hadn't been that.

Which, again, it was pretty depressing that the only half positive thing he could come up with was that Sam had sat down before he fell down.

This trying to look on the bright side of things, Dean decided, just wasn't for him.

Sam turned toward him and put his face against the side of Dean's neck. "Why do you smell like lemons?" he asked.

Dean slid his eyes to the side to look at him. All he could see from that angle was Sam's hair, which he blew at to keep it from going up his nose. "You know why, Sammy," he said.

"You're supposed to smell like leather and cigarettes," Sam said, his voice becoming an agonized whisper. "Your hair's wet. When your hair's wet, it smells like skunk musk... just a very... little. And oranges, but not lemons. It's smelled like that for the last three years."

Dean turned his head to the side to look at Sam. He was intrigued despite himself. "Why only the last _three_?"

"Because you switched shampoos," Sam said. His lips twitched in an amused half smile. It pleased him to see how surprised Dean was by how well he knew him. He was pretty sure Dean knew him just as well if he stopped to think about it. That didn't make this new little olfactory hallucination any better, though. "Before three years ago, you stole the bottles of shampoo and conditioner from all the sleazy motels we stayed in. Then you stopped and started buying that stuff in the yellow bottles."

Dean stared at him with wide eyes for a minute, then blinked as though to clear his vision and coughed out a little laugh. It was not an amused sound. "Stop it," Dean said roughly. He didn't want to hear this. "Just... stop."

Sam turned his body in against Dean's and moved one of his hands up his chest to cup the back of his neck. He pressed his face against Dean's sandpaper scratchy cheek, nudging him. "I want things to smell like they're supposed to again," he said

Dean sighed and rolled his neck against Sam's stroking fingers. "I thought you said my hair smells like skunk," he said.

"Only when it's wet," Sam said, moving his mouth over Dean's jaw. "And only a little. Hey, I like the smell of skunk."

Dean snorted. "Freak," he said affectionately. He reached up and caught Sam's petting hand and turned his mouth in against his palm. Holding his gaze, Dean kissed Sam's fingers, pressing his lips to each fingertip. Smiling slowly, Dean flicked his tongue out and licked between his middle and index fingers.

Sam drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out as Dean moved his tongue against his ring finger. He leaned in and touched his tongue to Dean's through his fingers, licking lightly.

Sam stopped first and ran his tongue over his lips. He closed his eyes and made a soft humming sound in his throat.

"You're tasting me, aren't you?" Dean asked, watching him.

Sam's lashes fluttered as he opened his eyes. "Mhmm, I am," he said.

"And? What do I taste like?" Dean said.

"Like you," Sam said. He leaned back toward Dean until he could feel his breath against his hand and knew Dean could feel it on his lips. "Good. Like Marlboro Lights, because you smoke way too much and mint candy because you're still trying to quit. Like... you." Sam made a soft sound of want and his eyes dropped to Dean's mouth. "I was so afraid you wouldn't," Sam said. "Afraid next time, you won't."

Dean let his fingers thread between Sam's and closed his hand. Sam clenched his fingers around Dean's, squeezing back, and caught his breath as Dean pressed soft kisses to each of his ruined knuckles.

"Tell me what you want," Dean said. He rested his mouth over Sam's scabbed and cracked middle knuckle.

"You want the long or short version?" Sam asked.

"What do you want right _now_?" Dean clarified. "Do you want me to help you up so you can go sit down? I'll get you some peroxide for your hand. I think there's still some in the bathroom under the sink. Or... Just tell me what you want, Sammy."

Sam sighed and leaned in to kiss him. It was a quick kiss and Sam was about to draw away and stop it when Dean caught his bottom lip lightly in his teeth and tugged then kissed him back, slow and deep. Sam moaned into his mouth and shifted closer, wrapping his arms around Dean's waist and pulling him to his body.

"I don't want peroxide," Sam said, moving his mouth down Dean's throat in small, nipping kisses.

"Ah... yeah, I know," Dean said. Sam bit him lightly over his pulse and Dean caught his breath, his head tilting back as Sam worked his lips down his throat, across his shoulders, where he pulled the material of Dean's coat and shirt away from his body to set his teeth over the point of his shoulder. "The bed, then?"

Sam made a soft sound like a growl and shook his head, his hands under Dean's shirt, shoving it up. "Right here," he said. He took his hands out of Dean's shirt to get his coat off. He threw it down and Dean's lighter hit the floor and skittered down the hall. "Do you know what I see right now?" Sam asked, plucking at the buttons of Dean's shirt with fingers that trembled. "Can you guess... what this place looks like to me?"

Dean shook his head and shifted to help Sam remove his shirt, then reached out to pull Sam's t-shirt off. Sam hunched over so Dean could drag the shirt over his head, then pulled Dean back against him, their chests bumping together then sliding, warm dry skin against Dean's, which was still damp and sticky from the rain. Dean shivered and shook his head again. "No," he said. "Tell me what you see. Describe it to me."

"A short stretch of beach where the sand's all black," Sam whispered. He pulled Dean down on the floor with him, under him, and nipped and licked his way down Dean's chest, chasing a tide of calico goldfish along his sternum to his belly. "The tide comes in, carrying its creatures in _you_ and a million humming insects catch on fire, creating the most beautiful sunset."

Dean stroked his hands up and down Sam's back, making soothing noises even as he lifted his hips to help Sam unfasten his pants. "That sounds like a nice place," Dean said.

Sam dragged Dean's zipper down and slid his hands inside his jeans to cup his ass and pull at him until Dean spread his legs and he could move between them. "Not as nice as you'd think," Sam said.

He ground his hips against Dean's and watched his face, how his gaze sharpened and his breath hitched. Just like the first time Sam kissed him and scared him so bad Dean had nearly hit him. It hadn't been that long ago and though they'd been working their way in that direction anyway—and everyone else, including Bobby, was so sure they had been fucking each other for _years_ already—Dean had been surprised. Now, several years later, Dean was still sometimes shocked by it.

Sam grinned and flexed his fingers briefly against Dean's ass, watching his eyes widen and his throat work as he swallowed. "You're too easy sometimes," he murmured, and ducked his head to lick Dean's mouth.

Dean squirmed against him and rolled his hips up against Sam's, breath catching on a soft moan as he made his crotch and Sam's meet and felt the friction of denim between their dicks. "I don't know... what you mean," Dean said through gritted teeth.

Sam laughed softly and shifted away from him. Dean made a protesting sound and reached for him, but Sam swatted his hands away and grabbed Dean, rolling him over on his stomach. "What I mean..." Sam said, leaning over Dean to lick and nibble between his shoulders, "... is that we've been doing this... kinda regularly for a few years now. And still... every time I kiss you, you're so surprised... and I know you're thinking somewhere in the back of your mind about how I'm your little brother and we shouldn't be doing these things when you used to babysit me, tuck me in at night, make me mac and cheese and fight with me for Dad's attention... You're thinking that on the scale of things, you're the guilty one here taking advantage of me because you still remember holding me as a baby."

Dean started to sit up, but Sam put a hand flat against the small of his back and held him down. "No you don't," Sam said. He hooked his fingers under the waistband of Dean's pants and dragged them down, pausing only to jerk his shoes off before removing them and tossing all of it down the hall after Dean's coat.

"Sam, maybe this is a bad idea and we— _shit_!" Dean said, biting out the last word as Sam pressed a finger inside him.

Sam stroked his finger back and forth as he wrapped his other arm around Dean's waist and pulled his hips back. Pressing himself along Dean's back, Sam breathed against the back of his ear and flicked his tongue over the lobe. "Your baby brother's got his finger—" Sam pushed a second finger into Dean's ass with the first and ran the tips of both over his prostate, holding Dean as he bucked against him from the sensation. " _Fingers_ ," Sam corrected himself. "I've got my fingers inside you and you can't stop shaking because of how much you like it."

Dean made a low sound of frustrated want and moved his hips back against Sam. Sam hooked his fingers and he moaned, his mouth slightly open and panting. "Sam... please," Dean said. He didn't know if he was begging him to stop or to keep going, but at this point, it didn't really matter anymore. "Sam—"

Sam nuzzled the back of his neck and gave a little twist to his hand, turning his fingers. Dean cried out and his hands clutched at Sam's arm around his waist. "I'm going to roll you over and fuck you," Sam said softly in his ear. "Do you still feel guilty about it?"

" _Yes_ ," Dean hissed. He tossed his head to move his ear away from Sam's breath, which was making him shiver. "I love you... in all the wrong ways," he said, voice ragged with the pleasure of Sam's fingers moving within him. "But there are just enough of the right ways left... I hate myself for it sometimes."

Sam took a deep breath, let it out gradually then pushed Dean down on the floor and rolled him over onto his back. "God, that is so fucking _wrong_ ," Sam said, laying over him to press quick kisses to Dean's mouth.

Dean blinked at him, then laughed. "You're some kinda freak, the shit that turns you on, you know that, Sammy?"

Still leaving quick little kisses on Dean's mouth, Sam lifted his hips up to tug at his belt, yanking the leather free of the buckle so the metal slid coldly along Dean's thigh. "Yeah, I know," Sam said. He pushed his jeans down his hips and grabbed Dean. "Open your legs," he whispered, and nipped Dean's full bottom lip.

Staring into Sam's eyes, concentrating on him, Dean did what he asked and reached out to put his arms around Sam's neck and hold on. Sam pulled Dean's legs over his thighs and watched him back as he slowly pushed the head of his cock into him. Dean tensed once, just a little and when he relaxed again, Sam thrust deep.

Dean arched off the floor with a shout and dug his fingers into the back of Sam's neck. Sam wrapped his arms around Dean's waist, his wide, long-fingered hands flat against Dean's lower back to hold him up as he started to move. Sam's breath washed warm to cold in the sweat on Dean's skin and Sam licked at it, tasting the salt of sweat that was still just the way Dean tasted after a day without a shower. Dean moaned and pulled at Sam's back like there was anything he could do to get closer and rocked his hips into Sam's grinding thrusts to meet him. He slid his hands down Sam's back, loving the way the lean muscles there moved beneath his fingers, but still aware enough of a difference to be saddened.

Sam saw the flash of sadness and frowned down at him as he leaned in to nuzzle the side of Dean's throat. He tasted the salt of sweat there, too and with his eyes he followed the path of a fan-tailed guppy up the side of Dean's neck, right where the artery was. "I'm so tired of dying," he whispered. He snapped his hips forward, watching Dean's face as his mouth opened wide to gasp. "Don't look at me like that now. I'm not dying."

"You are," Dean said. He let his hands slide down Sam's sides and fit his fingers over his ribs.

"Not right now I'm not," Sam said.

Dean nodded then cried out as Sam stroked his cock over that spot inside him again. Sam smiled and, having found his prostate, angled his thrusts to stroke it as he fucked him. Dean shivered and closed his legs around Sam's waist, body tightening exquisitely around his cock, forcing soft sounds of pleasure from Sam.

They whispered, "I love you," back to each other again and again, speaking the tired old words like two wild animals in the night who have discovered the meaning of them for the first time and are desperate to worship it before the sun rises and it melts. Dean clutched at Sam like he would disappear and Sam held onto him because he couldn't promise he wouldn't, and soon even _I love you_ melted into meaningless sounds. They both tried not to think about why everything felt so desperate now and Dean was sure Sam had more success at it than he did. But it was hard not to think it when Sam fucked him like he knew it was the last time and Dean touched him like he was asking him for it to not be and despite it all, Sam leaned down to whisper in Dean's ear that he had a crust of bright stars caught under his fingernails.

Dean's orgasm took him by surprise, it twisted through his body like vines or the stars in Sam's fantasies and Dean screamed. He was stretched out on his back with his arms over his head, hands braced against the wall, when it happened. Sam was on top of him, his body flush with Dean's, his own arms up and his hands around Dean's wrists. He watched Dean's face as he came, how his lips quivered and his tongue slid out to wet them, his eyes widened then closed and Dean had the longest, prettiest eyelashes Sam had ever seen. Sam lowered his head to lick Dean's mouth, licking his tongue then into his mouth to kiss him as he kept moving, tearing ragged little sounds of pleasured exhaustion from Dean.

When Sam came, his back bowed, pushing Dean down into the floor, and he cried out into his mouth. He shook and Dean tightened his legs around him, kissing him back and stroking his sides with his hands. There was a warm wash of come inside Dean's body and more on their stomachs, slick against their flesh as they moved together. The entire hallway was thick with the smell of sex as they both went lax on the floor, trying to catch their breath.

Sam smiled against Dean's chest and Dean moved his petting hand into Sam's hair. Death was the last thing either of them was thinking about as they curled up right there and fell asleep.

~~*~~

The next time Dean came home and found Sam on the floor bleeding, Sam screamed at him and tried to hit him. He walked in the door and Sam was on the floor with blood on his face and hands, curled into a fetal position on his side with his arms wrapped tightly around his legs, rocking himself. Dean went over to him and crouched down to see what he'd done to himself only to curse under his breath when he realized that Sam had scratched the shit out of his own face.

Dean reached out to take one of Sam's hands and look at it when Sam jerked away from him and darted a hand out to hit him. Dean blocked it by swatting Sam's arm and Sam sat up and screamed wordlessly into his face. He drew back to hit Dean again and Dean grabbed his arm, preventing it, snarling under his breath as he stood up, pulling Sam to his feet while still restraining him from hitting. It was easy enough with Sam being so weak now and not in his right mind enough to remember how to kick Dean's ass, but he struggled and he was still big enough that Dean had a hell of a time getting him to go where he wanted him to go.

Sam had strips of his own skin under his fingernails and marks on his face that made it look like he was crying blood. When hitting him didn't work, Sam tried to bite him as Dean got him into bed and restrained him. He almost managed that just because it was so unexpected, but Dean jerked his head back at the last second and pulled the last strap tight on the right arm restraint.

God, how they had wished Dean would never need to use those. They had got them the month before when Sam started forgetting more and more and showing little signs of the dementia the doctors had warned them about. In a lot of people—most people—it never turned violent, but Sam and Dean weren't most people, no matter how they might wish they were and Sam had lived a strange life that had often required violence. They decided that it was better to have the restraints, even if it was just a precautionary measure.

Sam thrashed on the bed and tried to kick him. Dean backed away, hoping Sam wouldn't bite his tongue off and turned to get something to clean the shallow wounds on his face with.

Angels and demons couldn't be worse than this, Dean thought. He ran hot water into a bowl and got a cloth out of the cupboard then went back to the bedroom to find Sam laughing to himself.

 _Hell_ wasn't worse than this.

~~*~~

Dean stayed home for the next three days to take care of Sam. After about an hour of screaming and trying his very damnedest to kill Dean, despite being strapped down, Sam wore himself out and went to sleep. When he woke up, he was confused and scared and he stuttered and stumbled as he explained to Dean that he didn't know who either of them were.

Dean left him restrained, though Sam cried and it made him feel like a complete piece of shit and paced the room as Sam slept again.

Sam still didn't know much of anything when he woke up again, but he begged Dean for painkillers and Dean helped him to sit up and held the water to his mouth while he took them. He told Sam who he was and that he was his brother, that Sam had cancer in his brain which was why he couldn't remember and that he would untie him if he promised not to try to bite his damn head off again.

He knew that the promise would mean almost nothing because it wasn't Sam's fault and Sam wasn't in control of his actions, but he figured he could handle himself against Sam and it made him feel slightly better to hear it. He took the restraints off and took Sam to the bathroom. When Dean led him back to bed, he sat down in the chair beside it and watched Sam turn on his side to sleep.

He clenched his hands together between his knees and listened to the ticking of the clock on the wall. He waited and hoped like hell the next time Sam opened his eyes, he'd remember. Failing that, he hoped Sam could still talk—that it hadn't gotten so bad yet that he would forget how. It would even be okay if Sam didn't know who Dean was, so long as he still knew himself.

Dean caught himself bargaining and felt like an idiot.

It would be alright, he thought, if Sam didn't remember that he wasn't thirteen, but nearly thirty. It would be okay if he still thought Dad was alive. If he couldn't remember what to call that color in Dean's eyes that he loved so much. If he lost minutes or even years. Dean could handle all that, and yeah, so maybe he was bargaining, so what? He just wanted Sam to wake up and be _Sam_ still.

"Not yet," Dean whispered, unaware that he was praying. "Just a little longer, _please_. I can't do this yet. I'm not ready."

Of course there wasn't any answer.

~~*~~

A couple days went by and Sam seemed to get a little better. He remembered everything and he was himself again and knew it. He got annoyed with Dean following him around all the time, trying to do things for him and take care of him and finally shouted at him to get the fuck out and go back to work.

Reluctantly, Dean did, but every time he came home now, he was anxious until he saw Sam and knew he was fine. If he said, "Hey, Sammy," and Sam replied with, "Hey, Dean," then he'd relax just a little and be okay again until he left for work the next day. If he didn't say anything... Well, then Dean would stand there and stare at him or walk around the house waiting for Sam to say _anything_ just to prove he hadn't forgotten how.

He came home one day to find Sam had left his chair in the living room to curl up in the bed with a bottle each of Jim Beam and Oxycontin and gone to sleep. Dean undressed and got into bed with him and lay there for a long time just watching Sam breathe. He touched Sam's face, trying not to see how much thinner he was than he should be and started to fall asleep himself when Sam opened his eyes and looked right at him. His eyes were glazed and his mouth was dry, but that was probably more the drugs and the alcohol—and the bad combination of the two—than anything else.

"Hey, Sammy," Dean murmured. He reached over and slipped his fingers into Sam's hair and stroked. "What'd you do today?"

"Watched something on TV about this wasp that lays its eggs inside the body of a live caterpillar," Sam said, moving his head against Dean's hand. "The eggs hatch and the larvae eat the caterpillar alive."

"That's disgusting," Dean said.

Sam turned onto his stomach on the bed and scooted over to him. "I think it's beautiful," he whispered, and kissed Dean. "They don't die right away. They _protect_ the baby wasps and then they die."

"It's still disgusting," Dean said. He allowed Sam his quick, chaste kisses for a while, then turned toward him so they were on their sides and kissed him back, adding tongue and teeth to it until he drew a moan from him. "Is that all you did?" he asked, sliding a hand up Sam's side, under his shirt. "Did you streak across the parking lot to get the mail?"

"No," Sam said. He moved against Dean and parted his legs when Dean pressed one between them. "I was tired."

Dean frowned and dropped his head to trail little burning kisses over Sam's shoulder to the hollow of his throat, where he paused to lick. "Are you still tired?" he asked, moving against Sam to feel the way he shifted against him to get closer.

"Yeah," Sam said. "But not too tired."

Dean smiled slowly against the side of Sam's neck and Sam smiled back, feeling the bow of his lips right next to his skin. "What if I'm on top?" he murmured, speaking against Sam's neck, into his ear. He gently urged Sam onto his back and put a leg over to straddle his hips. Bracing his hands on the bed on either side of Sam's shoulders, Dean leaned down to nibble and lick at his mouth. "Like this? With me up here doing all the work... There's a tube of lube in the nightstand still. We can go slow. You can fuck me for _hours_ and never have to move at all."

"Hours, Dean?" Sam asked skeptically. His voice was thick with want but he definitely didn't believe him.

"Okay..." Dean said, sliding his hand down Sam's belly to work his fingers under his waistband. "Maybe not _hours_. Maybe only one hour. If we're careful."

Sam laughed softly. "And really optimistic."

Dean grinned and closed his hand around Sam's cock inside his pants and... stopped. He looked up into Sam's face, saw his eyes were closed, and looked away. "Or not," he said, releasing Sam's soft dick and taking his hand out of his pants.

Sam lifted his head off the mattress, looked down at himself, looked at Dean, and sighed. "No go, huh?" he asked. He scowled and shoved Dean off of him to sit up on the side of the bed. He felt around on the bed for his pills and took three of them with a shot of whiskey from the half empty bottle.

Dean sat up behind him and ran a hand down Sam's spine. Sam shrugged him off.

"It doesn't matter," Dean said.

"It matters to me," Sam said. He tilted his head back and drank more Jim Beam like he was deliberately trying to kill his liver. "Without passion, we're dead," he said, and ran the back of a hand over his mouth. "I don't remember who said that, but I think I agree."

Dean was a little surprised Sam remembered the quote, fuck whoever had said it. "It's not that there's no _passion_ ," Dean said, tasting the word in his mouth like it didn't belong there. "Because there is. I mean... you _want_ to."

"Yeah, but I can't," Sam sighed. He put the whiskey bottle down on the nightstand. He remembered what Dean said about there still being a tube of lube in the drawer and sat there staring at it for a while. "Guess last time... was the _last_ time then," he said. He scrubbed a hand over his face and shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

"Yes, it _does_ ," Dean said, moving across the bed to sit with him. "It does. I'm sorry, man. I'm so..."

Sam looked at him sadly and put a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay, Dean."

Now it was Dean's turn to shrug Sam off. He got off the bed and started putting his pants back on. "It is _not_ okay," he snapped. He tugged his zipper up and started to leave the room, so pissed off he could hardly see through it then stopped in the doorway. He turned and sat down in the chair next to the bed instead. "Why aren't you _angry_?" he asked. "You're not mad. Ever. God, Sammy, how the fuck can you stand it?"

Sam looked at him sharply and suddenly he _was_ angry. He snatched up his whiskey again from the nightstand and drank so long that when he stopped, he was panting. "I _am_ pissed," he said. "I'm so goddamn pissed _all the time_ that sometimes I can't breathe. Sometimes I can't move and it's not because I'm too weak to stand or walk to get the fucking mail, it's because _what's the point_? I'm dying. Unless there's a letter from god in that mailbox saying someone made a hell of a mistake and I'm _not_ then whatever's in there can _wait_. Maybe I'll get hit by a car crossing the parking lot, I think and I almost hope I do because this way _hurts_. More than anything. And it's too fucking slow and I just want it to stop but I won't stop it myself because as long as I've got one more second with you, I'll take it."

Dean sat back in his chair and stared at him in surprise. "But you never say anything," Dean said. "It's always this, ‘Everything dies eventually, don't cry for me Argentina’ _crap_."

"Would it help if I yelled and cursed?" Sam asked. He suddenly drew his arm back and threw his Jim Beam bottle against the door frame where it shattered like it had been filled with firecrackers. His chest heaved with his deep, panting breaths and Sam's face was flushed with rage. "Would it help at all if I threw things? If I let you see, every moment you're with me, how truly fucking pissed off and freaked out I am?"

Dean swallowed thickly and shook his head. He could feel tears stinging his eyes and wiped at them with the heels of his hands. "Sammy..."

"You know, actually I feel a little better," Sam said wonderingly. He looked down at Dean then at the mess of booze and broken glass in the doorway and walked out of the room.

Dean watched him go, then put his face in his hands and wept.

~~*~~

After that, though Sam could get out of bed, but he needed so much help to get around that he usually didn't. He degenerated so fast that it was frightening and before either of them knew it, Dean learned about bed pans and catheters, forget rigor mortis and exsanguination. As it's getting dark at night, there's this thing called sun-downing that happens to the mentally unstable and Dean learned _all_ about that because that was when Sammy started to throw things and scream.

Sam's memory and speech went in and out, but usually not both at once, so Dean was left shushing the raving Sam who could speak but didn't know what he was saying and calming the silent, stuttering Sam with the confused, scared eyes.

On one of those rare days where Sam could remember everything and articulate himself clearly, Dean stayed home from work and sat by the bed playing chess with Sam on a flimsy cardboard chessboard resting in the seat of a kitchen chair between them and shared a bottle of Smirnoff with him. These days felt like the last days that there were and Dean despised that feeling of loss and finality that lay over everything they did like a smoking curtain. So, even though Dean hated chess, he would rather play chess with Sam than lose one of those days.

Sam moved a rook and said, "Check."

Dean grunted and considered the board as he took a drink of vodka from the bottle and offered it to Sam.

Sam shook his head. "I need to tell you something," he said.

 _Before I die_ , went unsaid. That was fine with Dean, he didn't want to hear it. "No, you don't."

"Yes, Dean, I really do," Sam said. He shifted on the bed to prop himself up on his elbow. "I have to."

Dean regarded him with blank, tired eyes. "Why?"

Sam scooted back on the bed to prop his back against the headboard. He pulled the blankets up in his lap and folded his arms over them by his waist, shivering. "Because I need you to hear it," he said.

Dean sighed and sat back in his chair. He took his cigarettes off the nightstand by the bed and lit one. "Alright," he said, tilting his head back to exhale. He let his head rest back against the back of the chair and stared up at the ceiling, waiting.  
"I am the question and you are...?" Sam whispered.

Dean's head shot up and he stared at him. "The answer," he finished. "Go on, Sammy, what is it?"

Sam licked his lips nervously, then nodded. "It was always going to be this way," he said. "I was thinking earlier and the thing is... I was dying all along. These tumors in my head were going to kill me all along. I'm... I don't regret anything."

"I do," Dean said softly.

"I would rather I lived the way we did than go to Stanford, become a lawyer, marry Jess," Sam said. "I lived like _this_ instead of like I had time."

"Sam... don't tell me what to feel or think about this," Dean said. He reached over the wood chair where the chessboard sat to crush his cigarette out in the ashtray sitting there. "I love you, but you don't get to tell me not to be hurt or be pissed off or to go through every single one of those grieving steps a million times before I give up and blow my own brains out. You have no regrets. Good for you."

"No, listen," Sam said. He sat forward and stared at Dean until Dean met his eyes. "People die," he said sternly. "All the time, people die. Don't you dare act like you're just now figuring that out."

"Yeah," Dean said. He reached over on the chessboard and moved his queen three spaces. "Is that it?"

Sam slumped, then sat back, "Sure."

"Good," Dean said and stood up. "Check-mate."

~~*~~

Dean finished the last beer of the six-pack he'd brought with him and lay back in the grass as he tossed the can over-handed in the general direction of the ditch beside the road. Overhead, the stars twinkled so that he could almost imagine them laughing at him.

He ran a hand over his face and found that it smelled like the salt and ashes under his fingernails.

There was a sound to his left and he turned his face on the grass to look that way. He was at a crossroad and he half expected and more than half hoped for a minor demon wearing the meat suit of a barmaid to step out of the trees by the roadside. But he knew that was bullshit because there weren't any demons left and even if there had been a few little ones that fell unnoticed through the cracks, Dean couldn't have dealt with them now. Without a Hell to go home to or a master to answer to, Dean's soul wouldn't be worth a damn.

A cat slipped out of the shadows and its eyes caught the faint moonlight, flashing. The cat sniffed the air, looked at him balefully and then wandered off down the road.

Dean sighed and looked back at the night sky. Not far off, something was burning and the smoke floated down to him like a light mist. Dean sniffed the air, then breathed it in.

With no definite plan of doing anything with it really, Dean didn't take the gun out of the shoulder holster where he'd put it, but the weight of it there against his side was comforting in a vague way. Options. You always had to have options.

He closed his eyes, wishing he had just one more beer. He wondered who would salt and burn _his_ body.

There wasn't anyone left.

 

  
**XXX**   



End file.
